


A Secret Garden

by Haberdasher



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Romance, Asexual Jonathan Sims, Awkward Romance, Canon Asexual Character, Canon Rewrite, Chronic Illness, Denial, Denial of Feelings, Drama & Romance, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Flowers, Hanahaki Disease, Illnesses, Internalized Acephobia, Language of Flowers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious, Oblivious Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, POV Jonathan Sims, Pining, Romance, Seasonal, Self-Denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: A retelling of TMA canon, but with (chronic, nonfatal) Hanahaki Disease at the forefront of things.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 16
Kudos: 274





	A Secret Garden

Shortly after Martin moved into the Archives, Jon noticed that Martin kept coughing up bluebell petals.

Unsurprisingly, the most apparent effect of this problem was making Martin’s already haphazard work even less likely to be actually helpful to the archival staff as a whole. He’d drop stacks of files whenever he began a coughing fit, ruin statement recordings by entering the office while hacking away, and the spit-covered flower petals left all over the floor of the Archives... well, Jon certainly didn’t envy the janitor’s job there.

Jon looked up the problem on his computer, once, because Martin didn’t seem all that concerned with it, so if anyone was going to prevent spittle and blue stains getting on important documents, apparently it was up to him. The results were clear enough: coughing up flower petals was a symptom solely associated with Hanahaki Disease, a chronic condition associated with unrequited love that flared up in the spring months and tapered off come autumn, but could be permanently cured only by a major invasive surgery on the respiratory system (that would remove both the flowers and the feelings behind them) or by getting the object of one’s affections to return them.

Well. That put some of the snippets Jon had overheard from the other archival assistants, bits of teasing Martin about something he hadn’t quite understood, into perspective. Martin was in love, a love strong enough to manifest physically, and whoever it was that had his eye apparently didn’t reciprocate it.

But it certainly wasn’t Jon’s job to... to meddle in Martin’s love life, of all things, really! And the surgical option seemed a little drastic, given the relatively mild symptoms currently being displayed, and a medical decision of that magnitude was clearly best left up to Martin and his doctor.

Jon supposed that, given the alternatives, he would just have to put up with Martin’s coughing and bluebell petals for a bit longer.

At least it would go away come autumn--or sooner, perhaps, if he was lucky...

.

When Jon returned to the Archives, after Elias confessing to the murders that he’d tried to pin on Jon and managed to get things more or less back to business as usual (whatever that even meant, these days), he returned to a workplace practically covered in bluebell petals.

Jon had forgotten about that when he was gone. Martin’s ailment had slipped his mind, as it had been absent since a month or two after Prentiss attacked the Institute, and the two of them hadn’t crossed paths since spring had sprung once more. But sure enough, Martin was coughing up flower petals again, if anything more so than he had the previous spring.

Jon found, though, to some surprise of his own, that it didn’t irritate him the same way it had a year ago. Sure, it was inconvenient, and messy, and generally unsanitary, but he couldn’t really blame Martin for being sick, could he? Even if was a rather... unusual kind of sickness; feelings were about as easy to control as one’s immune system, in Jon’s experience, which was to say not at all.

Still, it certainly wasn’t ideal, and after weighing his options over and over again in his mind, Jon decided to flat-out ask Martin what was going on.

Martin’s face had gone very, very red when he heard Jon’s question, and he stammered out a claim that it was nothing, and that Jon shouldn’t worry about it, really. It clearly _wasn’t_ nothing, and even ignoring the value of communicating with his team (and Jon kept remembering how Georgie told him he needed people now more than ever) this sickness was negatively impacting Martin’s work, at a time when the very fate of the world depended on that same work, but-

Well. He couldn’t make Martin talk if he didn’t want to.

(Or- or he _could_ make Martin talk if he didn’t want to, technically, but he _wouldn’t_. He wouldn’t betray Martin like that. He needed to be building trust among his team right now, not breaking it.)

Jon just hoped whoever it was Martin was mooning over would get the hint already, so Martin could stop suffering like this.

.

A couple weeks after waking up from his medically-impossible coma, after making a choice that saved his life but at a cost he still wasn’t sure was worth it, Jon had a coughing fit and found a single white flower petal on his desk at the end of it.

Part of him recoiled at the obvious conclusion to be drawn there. For one thing, he’d half-convinced himself that he was immune to Hanahaki Disease, that the kind of love he had to offer wasn’t enough to qualify for it, even before raising the question of how greatly his anatomy must be changed by... recent events. Jon even considered the possibility that this was connected to him being an avatar of the Eye somehow before admitting to himself that that didn’t really make sense, that flowers weren’t in any way connected to the power that had a stronger grip on him than ever.

Jon almost wished for the kind of gentle teasing over it that Martin had gotten from Tim and Sasha way back when--only two springs ago, now, but it felt like an eternity--but this wasn’t the same team from back then, and they certainly didn’t share the same easy camaraderie as the archives team had back then. Jon’s new condition got him a few raised eyebrows, a few awkward stares, and one accusation of this being proof that he wasn’t the _real_ Jonathan Sims (thanks for that one, Melanie), but nobody asked the obvious, nobody pressed Jon on the details behind his sickness.

Even in the Buried, where there was barely enough room to breathe, Jon still found himself choking on flower petals-- _gardenia_ , his brain had supplied a few days beforehand, after he’d coughed several white petals onto his tape recorder--and Daisy never said so much as a word about it.

When he let himself think about it--which wasn’t often, given how much else was on his mind these days--Jon knew, deep down, what the gardenia petals meant, who they were meant for. That should have made things easier, but it didn’t, because Martin was off with Peter Lukas, and Jon had to trust that Martin knew that he was doing, that he had a plan and knew the risks of carrying it out...

...and since he’d woken up, Jon had yet to see a single bluebell petal on the floor of the Archives.

But that was fine. He’d be _fine_ , really. Given everything else on his plate, every other terrible fate that might befall him if he let his guard down at the wrong time or made the wrong move, Jon was willing to accept a lifetime of coughing up gardenia petals, if that was what it took. It... it wouldn’t be _ideal_ , but... what _was_ , these days, really?

But then Martin--or possibly Lukas pretending to be Martin, or Annabelle Cane pretending to be either of the other two, it was impossible to say for sure--left a tape on Jon’s desk that _had_ to be a thinly-veiled cry for help, and Jon followed Martin into the tunnels, followed him into the Lonely, without so much as a second thought.

And then Martin broke his heart.

_I really loved you, you know?_

Jon noticed the past tense, and it hurt, hurt more than anything. For a moment, Jon wondered if Lukas had made Martin have that surgery he’d read up about, the one that removed both flowers and feelings-

But no, that wasn’t right, because when Jon had ran into the tunnels, he’d been following a trail of bluebell petals all the way to the Panopticon. (Jon had coughed up a few petals of his own as he’d made his way over there, blue and white petals mingling atop the dark ground of the tunnels.)

He couldn’t even blame surgery, then. This was all natural, a deliberate decision on Martin’s part to repress his feelings in the name of the greater good, with the “help” of Peter Lukas’ guidance...

And then Jon heard Lukas’ story, and killed him without hesitation afterwards, and returned to Martin’s side, and...

_I see you._

And Jon and Martin locked eyes in the middle of the Lonely, and a hope Jon had just about given up on was unexpectedly rekindled, and suddenly Jon was very sure that neither of them would have to cough up flower petals ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Flower imagery used:  
> Bluebells are associated with humility, gratitude, everlasting love, and constancy.  
> Gardenias have several meanings, but the one I was going for here was a secret/untold love.
> 
> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
